Idyllic seaside retreats such as Portsea and Boomerang Beach were near empty on census night 2011 according to the ABS which found up to 90 per cent of homes unoccupied in some areas.

Newly released figures show a majority of homes in some parts of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, Queensland’s south-east coast and the south coast of Western Australia were empty on census night.

Nationwide just over 934,000 homes were unoccupied, or 10.7 per cent, up from 10.4 per cent in 2006.

A larger proportion of empty homes in popular holiday house areas is to be expected, but experts were surprised by the numbers. In Portsea, Victoria, the census found 88 per cent of homes were unoccupied. Homes at Boomerang Beach on the NSW Central Coast were 75 per cent empty.

“People went to these coastal places thinking they would either work remotely or commute in some limited kind of way and potentially transition to retirement,” said Roberta Ryan, a director of urban research consultancy Urbis.

“But the overall transition hasn’t occurred at the scale that was predicted because areas that do have a lot of permanently unoccupied housing are places that are challenging to live. There is not a lot to do or there aren’t a lot of activities going on, except during tourist periods.”

Much was written about the great shift to the coast in the early noughties as soaring asset prices made it easy to justify holding an unoccupied home.

But since the financial crisis, vast numbers of beach houses have come on the market and prices have plunged. Buyers are scarce.

Demographer Bernard Salt argues the “grass is greener” phenomenon lives on and holiday homes simply became too expensive. As property prices fall and consumer confidence rises, the money will start to flow to coastal areas again, he says.

But Ms Ryan said that more than market forces were at work. She said seachangers discovered living on the coast was not all they had imagined.

Retirees found they needed better hospital facilities, and found new reason to be back in the capitals when their grandchildren came along.

“Some of those towns will not recover,” she said. “In my view you need geographical proximity to major health infrastructure, opportunities for employment and a critical mass around communities.”

Damian Taylor, a principal at buyers agency Morrell & Koren, often acts for buyers in the Portsea area of the Mornington Peninsula. He said demand was scarce.

“It really is tough, particularly at the very top end, there's not a lot of appetite [for housing] and there hasn’t been appetite for quite some time,” Mr Taylor said. “There hasn’t been a wholesale sell-up because there hasn’t been a lot of buyers. They turn off their power, put the blinds up and leave it.”

But he also thinks the numbers are a bit odd. “My experience tells me there are more than 12 per cent of home owners in Portsea who are permanent residents.”

Macroplan Dimasi senior economist Jason Anderson pointed out the census was collected in August last year – when the Victorian coast in particular is cold and miserable.

“If there are older retiree householders who live in those areas, often in winter they go north or they go somewhere warmer,” he said.

He also said it could be hard to get people to respond to the census in some areas, particularly those with a lot of older people.

The figures also show a relatively large number of empty homes in rich capital city areas such as Point Piper in Sydney where 18 per cent of homes are unoccupied and the Perth CBD where 19 per cent are empty.

The Australian Financial Review

BY Ben Hurley

Ben writes about emerging companies, entrepreneurship and property for BRW.